• Formfiller@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Confiscate all personal wealth over 100million. Break up any company worth over 50billion. Take all institutions of public service out of private equity: utilities, house, prisons, retirement, schools, postal, healthcare and public land management. Reform the legal system to not give the wealthy any advantage. Do not allow elected representatives to own stocks. Do not allow politicians to take private money for political campaigns. Allowing people and corporations to acquire this type of power has been humanity’s whole problem for thousands of years

    • Wilco@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Get private equity out of hospitals and forbid them land ownership.

      The current private equity hospital grift:

      1. Buy a non profit hospital and ruthlessly expand it, putting all other competition out of business.
      2. Become the hospital’s own 3rd party billing center (same name)
      3. Become the hospitals own 3rd party collection service, a law firm.
      4. Collect millions per year from the government to pay off unpaid hospital bills.
      5. Collect those bills with the third party collections by any means, garnishment, denials of service. 6. 6. Get the local courts dependent upon the court fees involved.
      6. Collect legal fees on top of the actual medical bills, thus “triple dipping” and getting paid three times … all for services that were mostly paid for by insurance already.
    • Manticore@lemmy.nz
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      2 months ago

      Billionaires technically don’t have much personal wealth. They leverage their illiquid assets as collateral to take out massive loans. Which they can later cover with taking out even bigger loans.

      The liquid wealth of the wealthy is very low, technically in debt. This is another way they can avoid paying tax as they technically don’t have much of anything, and the reason why ‘declining to take a salary’ is typically meaningless.

      • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Buy borrow die

        It does have a notable Achilles heel though, which is that the underlying portfolio has to keep appreciating in value.

        • Manticore@lemmy.nz
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          2 months ago

          Well if it doesn’t, sell your stock to yourself a la Elon Musk, who sold X at a loss to XAI (a company he also majority owns). The ‘loss’ of ~6bil in value (iirc) means he can now gain ~6bil from any other sources without paying gains tax.

  • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    The billionaire fortunes pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars of unearned appreciation owned by regular home owners.

    It’s the unearned part that matters most, at least capital investment has some benefit to the economy. Real estate appreciation adds literally zero value to the economy.

      • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        By Purchasing up and holding the supply empty, artificially creating the housing crisis by lobbying against affordable housing construction and exploiting the rent economy of our cities. The rich are outcompeting us for resources.

        • entwine413@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          What do regular home owners have to do with it? Most regular home owners only own one home.

          • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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            2 months ago

            I’ve made a million dollars in appreciation on my home in the last 15 years.

            Are you telling me just because I own one home, that I’m not part of the problem?

            • aesthelete@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              You’re not really even in the same category as the idle rich. Like sure, you can sell your house and get a profit but you have to live somewhere. If you bought again a similar house in the same area you’d break even.

              I’ve got a quarter million dollars in appreciated wealth from my home in five years, but that’s only useful to me if I want to take out a HELOC (with shitty ass rates) or move to someplace that sucks a lot worse.

              Every other option would require me to become a landlord, in which case I would be part of the problem.

              I’m looking to buy a better place and sure my place went up in value, but unless I want to also change locales I’m gonna have to fork over another wad of bills to get one.

              It’s definitely not as bad as being a new market entrant with no capital and no existing investment, but it certainly isn’t the lighting up cigars with hundreds type of wealth you’re pretending it is.

            • entwine413@lemm.ee
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              2 months ago

              Correct. I’m telling you that individuals owning a single home aren’t part of the problem.

              • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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                2 months ago

                Individuals voting to keep the value of their home from dropping down to reasonable levels ARE the problem. That’s almost all home owners.

          • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            No one mentioned regular home owners. Why are you making devisive comments not related to any point that were made?

            • entwine413@lemm.ee
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              2 months ago

              The billionaire fortunes pale in comparison to the trillions of dollars of unearned appreciation owned by regular home owners.

              Yes they did.

              • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                You’ll notice it wasn’t me though, so why am I being asked what somebody I’m actively disagreeing with means by “regular homeowners”?

              • BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Bollocks, billionaire propaganda. Less that 3,000 people collectively control more than 90% of the World’s wealth. It doesn’t pale in comparison to anything. You’re just a bootlicker, or contrarian, makes no difference. You’re still wrong.

        • benignintervention@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Can you explain how? I fail to see how families owning a single home to live in is more extractive than megacorps and banks leveraging leviathan assets to create an artificial shortage and rent market

          • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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            2 months ago

            Because when you look at the total ownership, individual home owners are making the vast majority of the profit from keeping prices high. Around 65% of homes are owned by the family that lives in them, and the second largest chunk of the market is dedicated rental apartments which need to be owned by corps or they would never get built in the first place and are a needed part of the economy, then a smaller chunk is the landlord who own their home plus one rental.

            Corporate ownership of non-dedicated rental buildings (houses, townhouses, etc) is still a very small percentage of the overall market.

            Should it be happening at all? Probably not, but at the end of the day most of the profits of housing and land appreciation are being reaped by single home owners.

            There was a news article a few days ago about a new development land purchase that just went through in Vancouver, BC. 25ish lots were purchased from individual home owners, for a total of $100 million or about 4 million dollars per lot. That cost gets passed onto the people buying the new condos going in, and the profit is going to individual home owners who probably bought those lots for hundreds of thousands over the last twenty or thirty years.

            • benignintervention@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              So it sounds like a rock and a hard place. Homeowners don’t want to lose money (and for many doing so would destroy their financial well-being), but they’re also incentivized by banks and realtors to ask higher and higher prices. This also affects voting patterns (i.e. “I bought at an astronomical cost and if it loses value I’m fucked”). But it all sounds like the homeowner is caught between market forces that propel prices higher. The relatively recent introduction of blackrock to corporate homeownership has an outsized impact, like your example, where they spend a ridiculous amount for a property they intend to never sell which will also inflate the property value in a region. I’d be curious to see how that difference could be quantified and understood. Honestly it all feels like 2008 again

              This is just anecdotal experience, but when I bought my house I was the only bidder who needed a place to live. The seller and the people I bid against were all looking for rental properties. I honestly only got the place through a fluke

              • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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                2 months ago

                You’re right that this is a rock and a hard place. Which is why I don’t expect it to change anytime soon. What needs to happen is that home ownership rates need to drop, meaning more voters will be renters, then they will have the political clout to push through policies that make things more affordable for them by destroying home values for the now minority of owners.

                I give it about 30 years or so before we see that.

                • benignintervention@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  I disagree here. Rent is a siphon for your money to go to the wealthy landowners, just like these rising housing prices siphon more of your money to banks.

                  Unless you’re saying that renters have more political leverage? Which I’m also not sure I agree with. It’s easier to evict a renter than an owner. I think we need more affordable housing, which depends on building accessible homes, controlling outrageous rent, and addressing zoning laws, but all of this depends on a strong economy for those goods and a surplus of jobs that pay enough. Systemic reform of zoning laws and lobbying is where change is